Spotify to arrive in India in Q1 2019

Spotify announced an expansion to the Middle East earlier this month, and now we learn the company has the intention to grow even further and reach India in the first quarter of 2019. Bloomberg reports the Swedish platform secured deals with major music rights holders, moving a step closer to the world's second most populous country.

Bhushan Kumar, managing director of the record label T-Series, confirmed “the deal is on.” T-Series is also the most-watched YouTube channel and often releases music videos before anywhere else. According to Sweden’s Di Digital, Spotify failed to acquire an Indian competitor, so it is entering the market on its own.

Spotify currently has 87 million paying subscribers, with only 8 million of them being from “rest of the world,” which is countries and users not from North America, South America or Europe. With the expansion, the numbers should rise, given the hundreds of millions of Indians with access to high-speed Internet, and already 75 million of them using domestic services like Gaana and Saavn.

Source | Via